00 ripe—Where We Come From by Matthew Stadler 4 In summer 2001, a young couple in Portland, Oregon, Michael Hebb and Naomi Pomeroy, built a table in their rented bungalow on North- east Failing Street. It was a clever contraption with long, hinged pieces of plywood that unfolded from the wall to rest on old wine crates. It took up their whole front room and seated about twenty. They invited twenty friends to dinner, which Naomi made from whatever ingredi- ents were fresh that day. The friends who came to eat left something in return. The first night they left chairs, but after that they usually left money. Michael and Naomi called their gathering “family supper.” Fam- ily supper was a lot of fun. There was no advertising, so you only went if you knew someone who’d gone before. Like many small-scale diy projects, it was lively and storied. Dishes were washed by drunk guests in a plastic kiddie pool in the front yard. The five Weber grills Naomi used caught the back porch on fire once. One night, Benicio Del Toro came; he was down the street filmingThe Hunted and wandered over, 5 matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 6 wondering what the noise and laughter was all about. Michael and family supper, and where the back room events would take place). Naomi’s newborn daughter, August, slept on the table during supper The back room took the common table of family supper and added a and got passed around to make room for the salad, or some other plat- deliberate conversation. As host, I would invite a writer I particularly ter of food. Some of this is true, and all of it was exciting, and family admired, and we’d eat together, fifty or so of us, and then we’d all supper quickly grew into a food business called “ripe.” have a conversation with our special guest. Things got fancier pretty And here a sticky word enters the scene, often portrayed as the fast. We added live music, bottomless wine and brandy, and a pro- snake in the garden: “business.” When and how did this table become gram of commissioned publications to round out the experiment. a business? It grew into a huge one—an internationally recognized You’re holding one of the results in your hands. group of three restaurants with nearly a hundred employees—that Michael and Naomi made it easy to jump over the cliff of these ultimately collapsed under the weight of debt. It also grew into a kind good intentions and find out what lay at the bottom. That summer of art project, a deliberate incubator of local culture that used the res- of 2005, we floated on the warm winds of ambition and Michael’s taurant economy to support everything from sculptors and architects special talent for enlisting the optimism and resources of a huge com- (commissioned to design and build the restaurants) to dance compa- munity. Ripe would cook and run the house for below-cost, just to get nies, fire-breathers, djs, and presenting organizations (given venues, things off the ground. Winemakers would donate a few cases for each fundraising dinners, and food and drink). event, contributions to a worthy cultural experiment. An e-mail from Ripe even had a writer in residence—me. Having long admired Michael and Naomi was all it took to fill the fifty seats. Soon the back family supper and marveled at ripe’s support of artists, I wondered how room was up and ready for whichever special guests I cared to book. the restaurant could help invigorate the civic life of literature. I asked I had some writers in mind, but music and the visual arts are also Michael and Naomi to take me on as “writer in residence”—none of us key elements in the literary mix; that’s my belief, anyway. And so two knew what that might mean—and their “yes” was, in essence, a way to essential collaborators joined our experiment that summer—a musi- throw the question back to me: Show us how dining together can help cian named Curtis Knapp, who chose musical guests to play, live, at the city develop a robust literary culture. each event, and Stephanie Snyder, the director and curator of Reed The first answer, the simplest, was the back room (which took its College’s Cooley Gallery, in Portland, who would select visual artists name from the alleyway catering kitchen into which ripe had stuffed to be special guests at their own back room events. 7 matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 8 By August we were ready to begin. I decided that food and politics people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and should be our first subject, so we invited the region’s most trenchant acclaim him, worse when they despise him … But of a good leader urban-planning critic, Randy Gragg (who was then just about to leave who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, town for a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard), and a local chef and political ‘We did it ourselves.’” A good host provides the right, simple arrange- activist named Ron Paul, to discuss the ways that Oregon’s land-use ments, the timing, and the conversational irrigation to get the whole, politics had planted the seeds for a unique food culture in Portland. rich organism of a group growing and blossoming into its finest flow- At the back room, we would be feasting on Oregon foods. What part ers.) At the first back room event, I learned the many ways a host can did the state’s visionary land-use laws play in setting that table? enable, or disable, an evening. It was a beautiful August evening. The loading dock/alleyway onto A host should grant inclusion. Everyone who comes should be which the back room opened had a small herb garden and enough welcomed, individually if possible. A host should give permission, room to sit or mingle, so we started the evening drinking out in the handing over the resources of the space explicitly to the guests; at sunshine. There was superb wine (ripe had catered a reception for the the back room, that means telling everyone they can sit wherever governor of Oregon the previous week, and the crowd hadn’t made they like; it means introducing guests to the bar and to the servers; it much of a dent in the wine supply—we were the beneficiaries), and means letting them know what the plans are. A host should pace the we listened to the drum, bass, and piano improvisations of the Watery evening, and a host should also say goodbye. Graves while the cooks sweated in the heat of the stoves. At family supper, Michael and Naomi took care of many of these I like wine and good company, and so my duties as host quickly things through the ritual of a welcoming toast, and we adopted that slipped out of mind. Hosting, I soon discovered, is an essential skill custom for the back room. Pacing was another story. At family sup- that makes this kind of social gathering really work. Enabling a com- per, the kitchen drove the night. When the food was hot, everyone munity conversation—giving people a chance to think together in ate; dessert came out when it was ready; when the food was gone, it public—is a lot like “leadership,” as Anne Focke describes it in her was time to say goodnight. At the back room, the kitchen was just marvelous essay, “A Pragmatic Response to Real Circumstances,” one spinning wheel in an interlocking arrangement of intricate parts. which the back room commissioned in January 2006 (and which is The musicians played as the cooks cooked and the guests arrived. Too included in this volume). She quotes Lao-tzu: “A leader is best when much drinking too early could sink the ship. As host, I had to check 9 matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 10 in with all these parties and run the wheels in unison, toasting to We don’t ask them to read out loud or recite. The back room is a bring us to the table when the time was right. chance to think together—not to listen to recitations of previously I believe it is better to eat and drink first and have a conversation composed bits of genius; not to sleepwalk through a rehashing of old later. No point rushing through talk to appease an empty stomach. questions; not to hear sound bites or the parroting of received wisdom. So after the toast, fifty-plus people sat down, elbow to elbow and To think together in an open-ended conversation is a rare skill, a lot knee to knee, to pass huge platters of food down the long tables for like reading—real reading—the sort of reading a good book demands. our shared meal. A common table is among the richest places to begin At its core, the back room offers us a chance to read our guest, slowly, a conversation with new friends. Dinner means meeting new people, keenly, hungry for the textures and surprise of thinking together. It and hoping they won’t hog the salad or main course. Quite a bit gets is thereby, I think, a fundamentally literary pursuit (regardless of the communicated in reaching to snag, say, a dwindling bottle of wine, guest’s specialty: literary, visual, musical or what-have-you).